oll away from the valley below. As I stood there, leaning
against a tree in the edge of the wood, some cows came by, little,
pinched, lean cows and a young dog bounding along, and then, after them,
slowly, an old man in gray--very lame."

The actress closed her eyes.

"He did not see me. He whistled to the dog and stroked his head, and then
as the cows went through a gate, he turned and faced the rising sun, the
light full on his face. He looked at the valley coming into sight through
the mists. He was so close to me I could have tossed a stone to him--I
shall never know how long he stood there--how long I had that face before
me."

The narrator was silent. Madame Orloff opened her eyes and looked at him
piercingly.

"I cannot tell you--I cannot!" he answered her. 'Who can tell of life and
death and a new birth? It was as though I were thinking with my
finger-nails, or the hair of my head--a part of me I had never before
dreamed had feeling. My eyes were dazzled. I could have bowed myself to
the earth like Moses before the burning bush. How can I tell you--? How
can I tell you?"

"He was--?" breathed the woman.

"Hubert van Eyck might have painted God the Father with those eyes--that
mouth--that face of patient power--of selfless, still beatitude.--Once the
dog, nestling by his side, whimpered and licked his hand. He looked down,
he turned his eyes away from his vision, and looked down at the animal and
smiled. Jehovah! What a smile. It seemed to me then that if God loves
humanity, he can have no kinder smile for us. And then he looked back
across the valley--at the sky, at the mountains, at the smoke rising from
the houses below us--he looked at the world--at some vision, some
knowledge--what he saw--what he saw--!

"I did not know when he went. I was alone in that crimson wood.

"I went back to the village. I went back to the city. I would not speak to
him till I had some honor worthy to offer him. I tried to think what would
mean most to him. I remembered the drawing of the Ste. Anne. I remembered
his years in Paris, and I knew what would seem most honor to him. I cabled
Drouot of the Luxembourg Gallery. I waited in New York till he came. I
showed him the picture. I told him the story. He was on fire!

"We were to go back to the mountains together, to tell him that his
picture would hang in the Luxembourg, and then in the Louvre--that in all
probability he would be decorated by the French government, that o